Scott combining homely sense with great genius! And how different from the hectic, morbid, unprincipled, and indeed blackguard mental organization of various brilliant men of the last age, was Shakspeare's calm and wellbalanced mind! It is only the second-rate genius who is eccentric, and only the tenth-rate who is unintelligible.

But if one is driven to a warm sympathy with the humdrum and decently dull, by contemplating the absurdities and vagaries of men of real genius, even more decidedly is that result produced by contemplating the ridiculous little curvetings and prancings of affectedly eccentric men of no genius. You know, my reader, the provincial celebrity of daily life; you know what a nuisance he is. You know how almost every little country town in Britain has its eminent man - its man of letters. He has written a book, or it is whispered that he writes in certain periodicals, and simple human beings, who know nothing of proof-sheets, look upon him with a certain awe. He varies in age and appearance. If young, he wears a moustache and long, dishevelled hair; if old, a military cloak, which he disposes in a brigand form. He walks the street with an abstracted air, as though his thoughts were wandering beyond the reach of the throng. He is fond of solitude, and he gratifies his taste by going to the most frequented places within reach, and there assuming a look of rapt isolation. Sometimes he may be seen to gesticulate wildly, and to dig his umbrella into the pavement as though it were a foeman's breast. Occasionally moody laughter may be heard to proceed from him, as from one haunted by fearful thoughts. His fat and rosy countenance somewhat belies the anguish which is preying upon his vitals. He goes much to tea-parties, where he tells the girls that the bloom of life has gone for

mental agony he enHe bids them not to

him, and drops dark hints of the dures in reviewing his earlier life. ask what is the grief that consumes him, but to be thankful that they do not, cannot know. He drops hints how the spectres of the past haunt him at the midnight hour: how conscience smites him with chilly hand for his youthful sins. The truth is that he was always a very quiet lad, and never did any harm to anybody. Оссаsionally, when engaged in conversation with some one on whom he wishes to make an impression, he exclaims, suddenly, Hold! let me register that thought.' He pauses for a minute, gazing intently on the heavens; then exclaims, "Tis done!' and takes up the conversation where it was interrupted. He fancies that his companion thinks him a great genius. His companion, in fact, thinks him a poor silly fool.

6

And now, my friend, turning away from these matters, let us sit down on this large stone, warm in the April sunshine, by the river side. Swiftly the river glides away. The sky is bright blue, the water is crystal clear, and a soft wind comes through those budding branches. In the field on the other side I see a terrier and a cow. The terrier frisks about; solemnly stands the cow. think here for a while; we need not talk. And for an accompaniment to the old remembrances which such a day as this brings back, let us have the sound of that flowing river.

Let us

CHAPTER XIII.

CONCERNING GROWING OLD.

WAS sitting, on a very warm and bright summer morning, upon a gravestone in the churchyard. It was a flat gravestone, elevated upon four little pillars, and covering the spot where sleeps the mortal part of a venerable clergyman who preceded me in my parish, and who held the charge of it for sixty years. I had gone down to the churchyard, as usual, for a while after breakfast, with a little companion, who in those days was generally with me wherever I went. And while she was walking about, attended by a solemn dog, I sat down in the sunshine on the stone, gray with lichen, and green with moss. I thought of the old gentleman who had slept below for fifty years. I wondered if he had sometimes come to the churchyard after breakfast before he began his task of sermon-writing. I reflected how his heart, mouldered into dust, was now so free from all the little heats and worries which will find their way into even the quietest life in this world. And sitting there, I put my right hand upon the mossy stone. The contrast of the hand upon the green surface caught the eye of my companion, who was not four years old. She came slowly up, and laid down her own hand beside mine on the mossy expanse. And after

looking at it in various ways for several minutes, and contrasting her own little hand with the weary one which is now writing this page, she asked, thoughtfully and doubtfully, Was your hand ever a little hand like mine? Yes, I said, as I spread it out on the stone, and looked at it it seems a very short time since that was a little hand like yours. It was a fat little hand: not the least like those thin fingers and many wrinkles now. When it grew rather bigger, the fingers had generally various deep cuts, got in making and rigging ships: those were the days when I intended to be a sailor. It gradually grew bigger, as all little hands will do, if spared in this world. And now, it has done a great many things. It has smoothed the heads of many children, and the noses of various horses. It has travelled, I thought to myself, along thousands of written pages. It has paid away money, and occasionally received it. In many things that hand has fallen short, I thought; yet several things which that hand found to do, it did with its might. So here, I thought, were three hands, not far apart. There was the little hand of infancy; four daisies were lying near it on the gravestone where it was laid down to compare with mine. Then the rather skinny and not very small hand, which is doing now the work of life. And a couple of yards beneath, there was another hand, whose work was over. It was a hand which had written many sermons, preached in that plain church; which had turned over the leaves of the large pulpit-Bible (very old and shabby) which I turn over now; which had often opened the door of the house where now I live. And when I got up from the gravestone, and was walking quietly homeward, many thoughts came into my mind. CONCERNING GROWING OLD.

And, indeed, many of the most affecting thoughts which can ever enter the human mind are concerning the lapse of Time, and the traces which its lapse leaves upon human beings. There is something that touches us in the bare thought of Growing Old. I know a house on certain of whose walls there hang portraits of members of the family for many years back. It is not a grand house, where, to simple minds, the robes of brocade and the suits of armour fail to carry home the idea of real human beings. It is the house of a not wealthy gentleman. The portraits represent people whose minds did not run much upon deep speculations or upon practical politics; but who, no doubt, had many thoughts as to how they should succeed in getting the ends to meet. With such people does the writer feel at home: with such, probably, does the majority of his readers. I remember, there, the portrait of a frail old lady, plainly on the furthest confines of life. More than fourscore years had left their trace on the venerable head: you could fancy you saw the aged hands shaking. Opposite there hung the picture of a blooming girl, in the fresh May of beauty. The blooming girl was the mother of the venerable dame of fourscore. Painting catches but a glimpse of time; but it keeps that glimpse. On the canvas the face never grows old. As Dekker has it, 'False colours last after the true be fled.' I have often looked at the two pictures, in a confused sort of reverie. If you ask what it is that I thought of in looking at them, I truly cannot tell you. The fresh young beauty was the mother: the aged granddame was the child: that was really all. But there are certain thoughts upon which you can vaguely brood for a long time.

You remember reading how upon a day, not many